Great Movies About Promising (And Terrifying) Young Women

No finer pleasure than movies by powerful women scaring the **** out of you

Are you ready to scream?

Halloween is the one time out of the year ghosts can leave their haunted houses, Jason Voorhees finally feels out of place not wearing a mask, and we find good reason to search back across the recent years for the scariest movies made by the scariest women.

And if you prefer your terror to be based on a true story? There are a couple of terrifying documentaries for you near the end.

Movies

MFA (2017) directed by Natalia Leite

IMDB description: An art student taps into a rich source of creative inspiration after the accidental slaughter of her rapist. An unlikely vigilante emerges, set out to avenge college girls whose attackers walked free.

“On the surface, M.F.A. is a film about a female art major who is dissatisfied with the way her school handles her sexual assault, accidentally kills her rapist while confronting him, and emerges as a vigilante killer set to avenge college girls whose attackers walked free — all while gaining more and more creative inspiration for her thesis project. While that premise may already be enough to get some people giddy, M.F.A. has a lot more to unpack than what sits on its narrative timeline.

Just below the surface exists a dramatic and psychological thriller that is bold, brave, and desperately needed in today’s social climate.” -Lisa Gallagher, Festival Director of Toronto True Crime Film Festival, writing for the Medium publication MUFF Blog

Pure (2019) directed by Hannah Macpherson

IMDB description: Several teenage girls at a Purity Retreat participate in a secret ritual, and they start to see a supernatural entity. The girls need to focus on the demon they have unleashed, as well as their fathers’ expectations.

[Enter] the world of the prom-like purity events where daughters vow to save their virginity for their future husbands and a marriage that’s often arranged by their fathers.

Pure [is] the new horror film with themes of gruesome group-think (think of a high school Handmaid’s Tale or a church-camp redux of Midsommar) as well as supernatural menace (Carrie would have been an ideal peer counselor).

The director calls this a “reverse possession” film due to the character of Shay begging for possession and the power to “punish those who have taken the girls’ power away.” Macpherson wanted this to be a discussion point, as she felt that it was “not about religion, although most religions should look at their approach to gender equality, but it’s about power and control and oppression.”

Macpherson knows her movie will infuriate some and she’s okay with that. “If people aren’t pissed off after watching this movie,” she says, “they’re a lost cause.” — Geoff Boucher, editor at large for Heavy Metal, writing for Deadline

The Other Lamb (2019) directed by Małgorzata Szumowska

IMDB description: A girl born into an all-female cult led by a man in their compound begins to question his teachings and her own reality.

Polish director Malgorzata Szumowska and screenwriter Catherine S. McMullen have made what is essentially a feminist parable set against patriarchal repression. It’s an moody mix of “Midsommar” and “The Handmaid’s Tale” built around arresting visuals and a persistent, slow-boiling sense of unease.

Szumowska’s mood is immediately unsettling and for the rest of the way we’re never given a reason to believe things will turn out well. From the outset we know something’s not right. Whether it’s the Shepherd’s pharisaical fervor that always leads to his own gratification. Or the “broken” women clearly exploited and brainwashed into subservience.

“The Other Lamb” certainly isn’t subtle with its message. You can’t mistake it for anything other than a metaphor for abusive relationships and their punishing effects. But while it might be obvious, that doesn’t mean it’s ineffective.” — Keith Garlington, writer for Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, founder of Keith and the Movies, writing for K&M

Two (2021) directed by Mar Targarona

IMDB description: Two people, a man and a woman, wake up naked and with their abdomens attached to each other.

For all of the punchlines it spawned, The Human Centipede (First Sequence) remains a legitimately transgressive shlock provocation whose power to stun and repulse hasn’t diminished since its 2009 release.

[The] script elicits squirms from David and Sara’s Frankensteinian attachment and mystery from the protagonists’ ignorance about why they’ve been selected for this experiment, much less deliberately paired with the other.

With regards to the former, director Targarona keeps shots of the duo’s sutured area to a relative minimum, the better to keep viewers imagining it. Instead, she focuses on the anguished expressions of her main characters, sticking tight to their faces in order to place us right alongside — if not in-between — them as a means of heightening our engagement with their freaked-out plight.” — Nick Schager, entertainment critic for Variety, Esquire, Entertainment Weekly, Rolling Stone, and Vulture, writing for The Daily Beast

Fresh (2022) directed by Mimi Cave

IMDB description: FRESH follows Noa (Daisy Edgar-Jones), who meets the alluring Steve (Sebastian Stan) at a grocery store and — given her frustration with dating apps — takes a chance and gives him her number.

“Fresh is a film of two halves, built around a rug-pull for the ages (and an exceedingly gratifying delayed title sequence). The first act swiftly and effectively establishes Noa and Steve’s connection, developed through brilliantly naturalistic chemistry and improvised banter between the two leads.

Then, in a bold move reminiscent of Amy Dunne’s ‘cool girl’ monologue reveal in Gone Girl, the film shows its hand, spiralling into more gory, pulpy territory.

Mimi Cave’s impressive first-time feature direction is also crucial to striking that genre-spanning tone, weaving in operatic, fantastical sequences with blunt cuts and scoreless action.” — Sophie Butcher, Social Media Editor for Empire Magazine, writing for Empire

Documentaries

And two imo horrifying documentaries:

Shirkers (2018) directed by Sandi Tan

Vox description: As a teenager in 1992, Sandi Tan and two of her friends made Singapore’s first indie movie, a scripted film called Shirkers — and then their American mentor absconded with the footage. Decades later, Tan set out to figure out what happened.

“Using a variety of media — including 16mm, animation, handwritten letters, tapes, digital, Hi8, and Super8 — Tan reconstructs the making of Shirkers and its aftermathc working through the story, sussing out what exactly had happened and how it affected the path that she and her friends took in their lives.” — Alissa Wilkinson, senior culture reporter and critic for Vox, writing for Vox

Girl in the Picture (2022) directed by Skye Borgman

IMDB description: A young mother’s mysterious death and her son’s subsequent kidnapping blow open a decades-long mystery about the woman’s true identity and the murderous federal fugitive at the center of it all.

“The awful revelations in Skye Borgman’s documentary about a seeming hit-and-run are utterly staggering.

Girl in the Picture is a fine and valuable addition to a genre that collectively if unwittingly poses the question: what might have been done with all the lives, with all the joy and energy stolen by these men, who think they have a right to take whatever they want, use it and destroy it? What might we all do in a world free of them, lived out of the shadows they cast? And how do we get there?” — Lucy Mangan, author of Memoir of Childhood Reading, writing for The Guardian

Short films

If you’re open to short films, you can’t go wrong with the CW series Two-Sentence Horror Stories, which is primarily driven by women as the writers/directors.

Those directors include: Natalia Iyudin, Vera Miao, Rania Attieh, Tayarisha Poe, Nikyatu, Kailey Spear, Jen Liao, Lynne Stopkewich, Bola Ogun, Kathleen Hepburn, Heidi Saman, and Nimisha Mukerji

Season 1 is by far my favorite, but I’m of course biased toward the season 2 short film “Elliot,” in which a transgender student is offered a magical means of standing up to his bullies by a mysterious janitor.

For more cool stuff to watch

Slow down and show some respect to the cinematic pioneers who came before us. Her Story and Brothers are two trans-focused limited series. Each episode is only about 10 minutes or less. That means you can watch both series in less time than it takes to wait for your first HRT appointment.

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